Hi everyone, ive been dying my hair for years, i know my way around hair stuff quite well, but want some advice.
I was turquoise, then bright red for about 3 years, all over, then decided i wanted a change and went to purple.
Biggest mistake ever and im still upset now about it.
I used pimpin purple and it was horrendous, i came out brown / maroon, worst colour ever!
It was applied correctly on bleached hair that was even and super light!
I had so much tourble fixing it and trying to get the right shade.
In trying to correct it I changed it too many time in a short space of time and ruined my hair.
Gave up and went back to turquoise. But the damage was done.
It was so long and in good condition

So in december i went back to black to give it a break, didnt want to do it, but i had take action so cut loads of my hair off. Its had 8 or so months, lots of trims! And its alot better now, but i cant stand the black anymore.

I want to avoid bleach as much as possible because i dont want to risk my hair getting ruined again, as im not sure if 100% of the damamge is gone, even though ive had lots of it cut off.

I had a plan to try and budge the black, and wanted advice on if any of you think it will work or have experience.

I had it bright for so long i only ever had my hair lightened from black twice professionally, first time was rubbish, second time another girl did a great job, but i want to try sort this myself.

Ive been reading endless reviews on colour b4 and decolour stripper
I gathered decolour stripper has the better reviews but im dubious.
I dont expect it to be a perfect even colour and super light.

My plan is to apply to use clarifying shampoo and washing up liquid for a week, use no conditioners or styling products, or straightneing irons etc.
Then to apply decolour, twice, then use an ash blonde toner over that to banish as much orange as i can.

My hair hasnt been dyed since june so have longish roots, would have to bleach those, but would use a bleach bath, which is what ive always used, ive never straight bleached.

Any on advice on whether this could work?

I would love to be able to go back to turquoise, but i know ill need a pale base for that, so if i cant do that red will cover orange.

I dont expect miracles from these products at all, which is why i would be graeful on advice of the best was to utilise them in a good combo to get me closer to where I wanna be.

I used Jo Baz to remove my black box dye (er, feria midnight or whatever it's called) my hair went red - despite the colour before this was blue. Apparently dark hair colours also have lighteners in them to help colour adhere so that when you strip it out it can be a completely different shade than what you had previously done to it.

I guess it depends on what your hair looks like after you've used the colour remover as to what your next step would be. I find clarifying shampoo to be incredibly harsh, & makes my hair feel awful, it was an incredibly help though when I wanted to remove some blue directions out of my hair without bleaching it out.

*~*~*~*~*Saaaaaaspie-doo-be-doo-bedooooo is awwwwweeesoooooome*~*~*~*~*-ScarletLady

Yeah your hair won't be anything resembling your natural colour if you use a colour stripper to get black out. It'll be bright ginger. There wouldn't be any point using it twice as all it does is shrink the colour molecules in your hair down so they can be washed out, it doesn't lighten at all.

I would say nix the clarifying shampoo. I dont think it will fade the black that much beforehand, and it will dry your hair, which you have worked so hard on to get healthy.

Also, I agree with Bomber. Using the color stripper more than once is futile. Maybe strip it, see where you are, and how damaged you are. You might find you can get away with a VERY mild bleach bath to bump up the base shade.

This is the curse of black hair, and why I swore I would never do it again. But STILL, every now and then it calls to me all the same!

I've never done it myself, but I've heard that the Vitamin C trick for rinsing out hair dye works surprisingly well. (You crush up vitamin C tablets and mix one part vitamin C to two parts ordinary shampoo, work it into damp hair and then let it sit a while.) Not having ever done it personally I couldn't vouch for its ability to remove stubborn black dye, but the people I've heard from who've done it said there wasn't any damage that one good conditioning treatment couldn't fix. Maybe someone else here has tried it?

I've done the vitamin C stripper and it worked surprisingly well albeit I was stripping manic panic so I couldn't say how well it'd work on permanent color. Perhaps you can use the color stripper and if it hasn't removed too much you can wait a couple of days, do some deep conditioning and then try the Vit C? I'd just be careful when toning it cause depending on how porous your hair is it may suck up that ashy pigment, which is usually green :/

I've used colour b4- wouldn't recommend it and it may not work that well as you've had red in the hair. It will strip come black but in my experience I needed 6 bleaches to get to all over platinum ( as I wanted blonde). However, just bleach only a month earlier had taken the front section of my hair straight to blonde. Somehow the colour stripper made my hair resistant to bleaching! Continue gentle stripping, use vitamin c, it does work but ultimately you can't get away from bleach.